That '70s Drift: Texas Tornados

 

THE SUGARLAND EXPRESS (1974) (B) - Gosh, Goldie Hawn was fun back in the day. The "Laugh-In" star had a great run in the '70s, starting with this little gem, where she plays Texas trash running from the law as she seeks to reclaim custody of her toddler son. This is also Steven Spielberg's big-screen debut (his warmup for "Jaws"), and he has a gas cracking up cars as Hawn's Lou Jean and her husband, Clovis, kidnap a Texas officer and lead a convoy of squad cars on a slow-speed chase to the town of Sugarland.

 

It takes a while to get accustomed to Hawn and her Texas drawl. Lou Jean visits Clovis (William Atherton) in prison and quite easily springs him from the remarkably low-security facility. They bum a ride from a kindly old couple, steal the car, crash it, then commandeer the squad car of officer Slide (Michael Sacks), who develops sympathies for the couple and their plight along the journey, much to the frustration of Capt. Tanner (a perfectly sedate Ben Johnson), who has to wrangle scores of police responders who join in the procession, along with news vans and helicopters.

They are allowed to make pit stops along the way, allowing Spielberg to create a travelogue of small-town Texas in the era of fried-chicken shacks and collectible gold-stamps. Over the course of a few days, Lou Jean and Clovis become folk heroes, with crowds of well-wishers cheering them along and occasionally foiling the police pursuit. We know from the start that their plan to grab the toddler from the older, well-off foster parents is folly (the film is based on a true story).

The second half is much more entertaining, as the media circus grows and Hawn lets Lou Jean's quirky personality and even a hint of emotion blossom. Spielberg (who did a test-run road movie with his memorable TV film "Duel" in 1971) not only cracks up a load of vehicles on the road, but he goes ballistic at an RV lot, where a couple of vigilantes blow the place to smithereens trying to nab the outlaws. The mayhem gets a bit tedious, but a strong ending brings it all home in 110 minutes.

SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT (1977) (B-minus) - Does this raunchy romp from the dawn of the "Dukes of Hazzard" era hold up five decades later? Yes and no. It's awfully dumb and a good 20 minutes too long. But it maintains a good deal of Southern charm, mostly thanks to the chemistry between Burt Reynolds and Sally Field and the PG relationship that blooms between them on the road from Texarkana to Georgia.

Much of this might pivot on your tolerance for the broad humor of Jackie Gleason as the blowhard Sheriff Buford T. Justice, a buffoonish Ahab haplessly stalking his prey. I appreciate his broad comedic skills, even if his vocabulary rarely expands behind calling everyone in his path a "sumbitch." Some of the old tricks of the Great One can be glimpsed through the offensive caricature. It's amusing to watch the sheriff's car slowly break down and lose parts before it limps to the finish line.

Stuntman Hal Needham, in his directorial debut, not only has a hoot finding creative ways to crack up cars and trucks (except for Bandit's beloved Trans-Am), but he and his trio of screenwriters delight in the wordplay of the CB culture of the '70s. The jargon flies by fast and furious, including a reference to a cop with a radar gun as a "Kojak with a Kodak."

Jerry Reed doesn't add much more than the memorable soundtrack, and Reynolds chews the scenery as the swaggering Bandit. The real star here, though, is the car, the symbol of freedom and rebellion. (It's hard not to notice the Confederate flag on the front license plate.) Field is charming as the runaway bride (she jilted the sheriff's dimwitted son) who just happens to end up in Bandit's car, and it's entertaining to watch her flirt with Reynolds (her real-life partner at the time) and stretch her comedic chops. It's not as outrageous as I remembered it originally, but it's still mindless fun.

BONUS TRACKS

The irresistible hit from "Smokey and the Bandit," Jerry Reed with "Eastbound and Down":

 

Our title track -- the Texas Tornados with "Who Were You Thinkin' Of":

New to the Queue

 Whatever ...

 

We were disappointed in Alex Ross Perry's adventurous "Pavements," but we'll brace ourselves for the nearly three-hour valentine to the VHS era, "Videoheaven." 

Jem Cohen ("Museum Hours") returns with another contemplative docu-style narrative film, "Little, Big, and Far."

Another thoughtful documentary from Brazil's Petra Costa ("The Edge of Democracy"), "Apocalypse in the Tropics."

A documentary about the long-running variety extravaganza "The Ed Sullivan Show," "Sunday Best."

BONUS TRACK

Our title track, from Husker Du:

Down and Inside Out

 

SUNLIGHT (A) - Sometimes low expectations can be your ally. And when a movie full of wit and charm comes along -- packaged in a road-trip buddy movie that pairs a suicidal man with a woman hiding from life in a monkey suit -- you go along for the ride and smile broadly at the result.

 

Brit Nina Conti, who has been dabbling in monkey-puppet antics for a decade now, directs and co-stars with Shenoah Allen, who co-wrote the loose-limbed, slyly funny script with her. The pair play a couple of emotionally wounded people on the edge of nihilism who eventually bring out the dormant humanity in each other. 

Their meet-cute is at a dingy motel in New Mexico, where Jane (Conti), wearing a cheap monkey suit, spots depressed radio journalist Ray (Allen), dangling from a sealing fan in the motel where Jane works and where she is suffering through an emotionally abusive relationship with Wade, the proprietor. Cut to Jane -- who insists on going by Monkey, her alter-ego, and committing 100% to the character -- piloting Ray's Airstream trailer when Ray comes to in the passenger seat, startled.

Jane is trying to escape to Colorado, and Ray hatches a plan: Stop off first in Espanola, dig up his dead dad, grab a valuable watch and split the proceeds with Jane, providing them both the financial boost that will fund a fresh start for each of them. None of this, of course, will be easy. Ray has to confront his controlling mother (Melissa Chambers), who is a ball-busting sheriff's deputy. And maniacal Wade -- the amazing Bill Wise ("Krisha," "Thunder Road") -- has saddled up his racing bike and is hot on their trail through northern New Mexico.

All of this would go off the rails into silliness if it weren't for the two (well, technically three) very real characters created by Conti and Allen. He is cynical and wisecracking -- a sort of rich man's Jason Sudeikis -- and is perfectly at home in his hometown of Albuquerque and its desolate surrounding environs. He cut his teeth in Albuquerque and around the world as part of a comedy duo, the Pajama Men, with high school pal Mark Chavez.

Ray's past is not explored in detail, but just one visit to his mother and his old home conveys volumes of pent-up angst. Conti speaks in a stilted British accent under that monkey suit, and her passive-aggressive approach to Ray -- foul-mouthed, self-lacerating, overtly sexual (yes, while covered in fur) -- snaps her new friend out of his stupor, renewing his vigor and expiating her own. A brief moment where she sheds the costume and soaks up the high-desert sun on her face holds more character development than most whole movies do.

The banter between the two is sharp and unrelenting. It is pithy but not in a self-aware Tarantino manner. Some of it feels ad-libbed, and Conti has a natural feel for how to end a scene with a dour punchline. (Her familiar editor is Riaz Meer.) You can't help rooting for these two to make it out of the harsh world of bumfuck New Mexico and onto a fulfilling next chapter, whether it is together or on a fresh path all their own (Jane dreams of running a boat-ride business).

Of course, that won't be easy, with Wade and Ray's mom plotting against them. And it won't be easy to dig up a grave, though it's both exhilarating and repulsive to watch Ray try. May this be a lesson in the futility of trying to excavate the past. 

BONUS TRACK

"Sunlight," for some reason, takes place around the turn of the millennium, and it has a gritty desert-noir soundtrack, including prominent placement of the Pixies gem "Hey":

Sympathy for the Late Sixties

 Two featuring Mick Jagger:

 

PERFORMANCE (1970) (B) - Ah, London in the Swinging Sixties. Donald Cammell, who would go on to direct a few horror films and thrillers, teamed with a young Nicolas Roeg ("Walkabout," "The Man Who Fell to Earth") to tell the trippy tale of a London gangster who goes into hiding at the home of a reclusive and libidinous rock star, played by Mick Jagger.

 

Square-jawed James Fox stars as Chas, who shares a thick Cockney accent with his mob mates, and their rough street life dominates the first third of the film, a sort of grimy homage to classic British noir. But then Chas kills a rival and, losing the faith and protection of his underworld boss, goes on the lam, sweet-talking his way into the home of Turner (Jagger) by posing as a fellow performer. He convinces a woman named Pherber (Anita Pallenberg) to let him crash for a while, and eventually he gets seduced by the hedonism of the household, which includes Turner's three-way relationship with Pherber and another woman.

Pallenberg -- notable for dating Jagger (purportedly) and his Rolling Stones mates Brian Jones and Keith Richards -- is quite of-the-era here, with her casual confidence, blond shag haircut and gravity-defying breasts, as she romps with her freckled friend, Lucy (a boyish Michele Breton). The women are intoxicating, and Jagger has quite a screen presence himself, with those lips and that swagger. Fox is convincing as the normie who ventures into the counter-culture, all the while knowing that there are thugs tracking him down. He will eventually experiment with drugs and gender identity, and make his way into the bed of one of the women.

Turner himself is in a crisis of identity and career, and the filmmakers morph the story into a taut, dark psychological grind. The camera shots are inventive, and the depictions of psychedelic trips manage to avoid coming off as trite. That first third could be a slog, but once the story settles into the claustrophobic confines of the country estate, the cast is engaging, especially whenever Jagger or Pallenberg are present. 

GIMME SHELTER (1970) (A-minus) - From the "Right Place, Right Time" files, in association with "Had to Be There" productions, we give you Exhibit A in support of the case for the final and absolute curdling of the Sixties high in America: this documentary about the December 1969 Rolling Stones concert in San Francisco that unraveled into chaos and a fatal stabbing. 

 

Part concert film and part detective documentary, "Gimme Shelter" is an infamous notch in the belt of the celebrated Maysles brothers (Albert and David) and collaborator Charlotte Zwerin. It curates fly-on-the-wall footage from the Stones' 1969 tour and recordings of iconic tracks at Muscle Schoals in Alabama, before the band arrived in San Francisco for the doomed "festival" at Altamont Speedway, a slapped-together free event that turned into the photo-negative of the peace-and-love gathering at Woodstock four months earlier.

The first half of the film is dominated by standard concert footage at Madison Square Garden in late November (the band was touring behind the album "Let It Bleed"), interspersed with scenes of promoters scrambling in a matter of weeks to cobble together the event that seemed snakebit from the start. (The star of the negotiations is famed celebrity attorney Melvin Belli, working the phones like a big shot.) The Stones are a bit lethargic at MSG (Jagger, of course, excepted). 

Many drugs seem to be involved. The Maysles camera crew (including a young George Lucas of "Star Wars" fame) observes the Stones in the recording studio, mostly watching them listen to playbacks of tracks that would end up on 1971's "Sticky Fingers," such as "Wild Horses" and "Brown Sugar." The crew also sits by as Jagger and drummer Charlie Watts review footage from Altamont, studying their reactions of an event that could have, at the time, ended the band's career. That is because the security force at Altamont was led by the Hell's Angels -- one of whom boasted that they got paid $500 in beer to protect the stage -- who roughed up the fans (and Marty Balin from Jefferson Airplane) and eventually stabbed to death a man who was reported to have wielded a gun and been hopped up on methamphetamine. The fateful moment is captured by the camera crew and analyzed frame by frame in the documentary.

The fantastic footage -- shot from all angles in and around the stage -- immerses the viewer into the chaos and the repercussions of some profoundly poor decisions by the organizers (which included Michael Lang from Woodstock). It is crazy to watch fans, roadies and Hell's Angels crowd the stage while the opening acts and eventually the Stones try to play music. Things got out of hand from the start (there was little planning for parking or the influx of 300,000 people), and it's no surprise that the Grateful Dead show up and decline to perform. 

Jagger -- ever immortalized by his pleas from the stage of "Why are we fighting?" -- looks shaken by the mayhem surrounding him. He later called the experience "a cathartic end of the era." Thanks to Zwerin and the Maysles brothers, this indispensable artifact chronicles the death of hippie idealism and the myth of Peace and Love.

BONUS TRACKS
From "Performance," the Last Poets with "Wake Up, Niggers":

 

Jagger, demonstrating how music videos would go a decade later, "Memo From Turner" (with Ry Cooder on slide guitar):

 

From "Gimme Shelter," Tina Turner giving an NC-17 performance at Madison Square Garden, opening for the Stones. Jagger blithely comments while reviewing the footage, "It's nice to have a chick occasionally." I'll be in my bunk:

 

The Flying Burrito Brothers, along with the Jefferson Airplane, opened for the Stones at Altamont. Here are the Burritos with the song featured in the film, "Six Days on the Road":

 

Let's give the Stones the last word, with "You Gotta Move" from the 1969 tour:

On Her Own

 

THE OUTRUN (B) - Every generation gets the "Days of Wine and Roses" it deserves. This one is more "Days of Sea Lions and Seaweed," but it gets the job done.

 

Saiorse Ronan turns in an understated but powerful and believable performance as a 29-year-old woman struggling to stay sober by leaving her London party scene and returning to the Scottish isles near where she grew up (with a pair of challenging parents). She communes with nature as a way to smother the desire to drink, with mixed results but with a clearer mind -- not only about her sobriety but also her eventual path in life.

Nora Fingscheidt, who seems to specialize in films about wild-card females ("The Unforgivable"), helps adapt a novel by Amy Liptrot, unspooling the story of Rona, splintering the narrative with flashbacks that can be a little difficult to follow but help illustrate Rona's jangled brain (and explain how she destroyed a relationship with a sweet partner (Paapa Essiedu)). Her mom (Saskia Reeves) and a gang of Jesus freaks annoy Rona, but the daughter is particularly triggered by her bipolar father (Stephen Dillane), whose mood swings spiral her back to childhood traumas, especially when he cocoons in bed, unresponsive.

Rona not only assists on the family farm but also helps conduct a head-count of the rare corn crake. She learns to appreciate the small joys in life, like a peek-a-boo swim with sea lions and learning the healthful benefits of seaweed. You sense that she has gotten her life on track, even if she has a long scuffle ahead staying sober.

MARIANNE (C+) - It has come to this. The culmination of my cinematic viewing and reviewing existence. Ninety minutes of pure, uncut Isabelle Huppert -- just her, and only her, addressing the camera. With that mesmerizing mask of a face, she could have been, as they say, reading the phone book for an hour and a half, and I would have forked over $10 to see it.

 

It turns out she reads from a rambling script (apparently) from newcomer Michael Rozek, who trains his camera inertly on Huppert seated on a couch as she unspools a disjointed monologue with a meta theme that dares you to keep watching. Huppert mainly addresses the camera when not flipping pages in the script she relies on, and she has an unmatched ability to pierce the screen and the illusion of cinema and seem to teleport into the movie theater and communicate directly with you. 

She mocks the concept of a narrative and plays with the idea that she will be taken as an elitist for engaging in such a (mock) vanity project (featuring her self-aware high-brow references to jazz's Thelonious Monk and Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky). It's a one-woman high-wire act that few others could attempt, let alone pull off. She is droll at times, and it's fun to study her at length. I enjoyed trying to figure out how she manages to convey volumes with her eyes, passing time as she fussed with her hair or struggled to pronounce the word forlorn in her thick French accent. You have to pay close attention in order to catch the sly changes in her blase mien.

Toward the end, Huppert finally gets off the couch but quickly ends up back in (her?) spacious home, this time in front of a mirror reciting an extended passage about love and the "noisy gong" from 1 Corinthians in the Bible. She is quite earnest throughout, and it's hard to tell whether she is truly trying to convey some philosophical ideas or merely engaging in an absurdist lark, winking along with Rozek. She brings it all around with a subtly effective conclusion, and by the end of the 87 minutes, you have either lusciously indulged in all things Isabelle Huppert, or you walked out an hour ago because it was all too flippant to bear. I enjoyed the experience but I can't think of anyone I'd recommend it to; thus the grade that might seem lower than this review suggests.  

BONUS TRACK

Rona listens to a lot of electronic dance music in her headphones during "The Outrun." But from the end credits, the ever-hopeful and fresh-sounding "This Is the Day," from 1983, by The The:

Doc Watch: Fight the Power

 Two from PBS ...

UNION (A-minus) - With ultimate insider access, this granular documentary provides classic fly-on-the-wall observations of the rag-tag group that heroically organized thousands of workers at an Amazon plant on New York's Staten Island, the first ever bargaining unit sanctioned at a warehouse of the e-tail giant.

 

In the shadows of COVID in 2021, Chris Smalls and Derrick Palmer formed the unaffiliated Amazon Labor Union, following a worker protest that had led to the firing of Smalls, who channeled his fury into an Ahab-like determination to topple a giant. Shunning an affiliation with a major national union, the ALU focused on grass-roots organizing, zeroing in on individual sign-ups in a short period of time at a facility whose workforce turns over roughly every six months. 

In all kinds of weather, a handful of diehards manned a tent at a bus stop outside the warehouse, offering food (and at one point weed) to win over the overworked crew members. We sit on on the leadership's Zoom meetings, where democracy gets messy (and prissy) at times (one of them will defect by the time the big vote arrives) but hope never dies. We trek with them to the offices of the National Labor Relations Board as they navigate the ancient bureaucracy, and hidden cameras take us inside the facility to lay bare the anti-union indoctrination sessions known as captive-audience meetings. 

Smalls, on balance, is a hero you can root for. He is a single father who displays an interesting mix of empathy for the workers and vengefulness toward the behemoth that tried to crush his spirit. Directors Stephen Maing and Brett Story are dogged in their pursuit of the story, their cameras often rolling in predawn hours as the huddled masses spill out of buses, steeling themselves for another 10-hour shift on their feet, with too-few breaks. As if we needed another reminder of the reality behind our blithe online shopping addictions.

HANNAH ARENDT: FACING TYRANNY (B) - This is another matter-of-fact installment of Philosophy for Dummies, meaning a Philosophy 101 class for people like me. We get a tick-tock through the life and career of Hanna Arendt, the foe of totalitarianism who rose to prominence when she coined the term "the banality of evil" while covering the Adolf Eichmann trial in Jerusalem in 1961 (reporting for the New Yorker magazine.

A German Jew, Arendt fled the rising Nazi regime in 1933 after briefly being incarcerated, settling in Paris, working toward a Jewish state in Palestine, before a brief pilgrimage to her postwar homeland and then becoming an American citizen in 1950, the year before she published The Origins of Totalitarianism." This "American Masters" production is a bit obsessed with her love life -- she famously dated the legendary Martin Heidegger (who would fall in with the Third Reich) and later had an open marriage. But it gives full berth to her words -- through archival interviews and her writings, voiced by actress Nina Hoss.  

The rise of the Nazis (later echoed in the Nixon-Vietnam era) should send chills down the spine of modern Americans, with a rhyme scheme readily apparent. We get this quote:

If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer.  And the people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act, but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people, you can then do what you please.

The message from this surface-level analysis of one of the 20th century's big thinkers: Pay attention to the past; totalitarianism can take root anywhere and at any time.